


light

by starforged



Category: The Grisha Trilogy - Leigh Bardugo, The Language of Thorns - Leigh Bardugo
Genre: Dysfunctional Family, Family Feels, Gen, Post-TLOT, Pre-Grisha, Siblings With Problems, the Ulla makes the Sun Summoner fic you never knew you needed
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-19
Updated: 2019-05-14
Packaged: 2019-10-12 11:57:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,631
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17467100
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/starforged/pseuds/starforged
Summary: In a dark cave, far to the north, a boy who is no longer a boy requires help from a girl who is no longer a girl.





	1. Chapter 1

She is lonely. 

Not at first. 

At first, she enjoys the solitude that beats around her between guests. The poor souls that need her are enough at first. She entertains and grants a desire, and she takes what she wants. 

Then she is alone again, pleasant and quiet. 

It takes years for that loneliness to begin creeping in. Like ink, it sticks to her skin. It doesn't come off. Bit by bit, it starts to cover her. She hates herself for it, but she aches for Signy. They were friends, a pair in harmony. 

She hates Signy for her aches. 

And that's how easy it is to let herself be swept away by her poor, unfortunate souls. Her sweet children, her horrid boys that have to be punished for tricking girls. She keeps them close to her when she gets too lonely.

That's how he finds her. 

She hasn't quite forgotten the boy that resonated inside of her so long ago. When he walks into her caves to seek her out, he's not much of a boy any longer. She's not much a girl. His face is more defined, and she can pick pieces of herself out of him. 

He walks into her cave, older, defined, and she realizes that ache could kill her. It can open wide and swallow her whole, swallow the world whole. 

“You have become quite the legend,” he says. 

Her head tilts. She slithers closer to him, tail lashing behind her. 

He waited years to come back to find her, but she tries to not blame him. 

“I should have gone with you,” Ulla wills herself to say. Her throat aches, her voice scratches. 

He frowns. “And now look where you are.”

“A legend. A myth.” Her smile is slick and self-satisfied. Her promises are kept, as all promises to her have been kept.

He doesn't smile back, but she thinks maybe there is something that reflects back out at her from his gaze. It softens a bit. The gaping maw of loneliness gnashes its teeth.

Crouching, he reaches a hand out to her.

Ulla eyes it with suspicion. “You knew who I was the moment you met me.”

“Not the exact moment.”

“You knew how to find me.” That's accusation in her voice. He waited and waited and waited to find her. 

His fingers curl in slowly towards his palm. Anger exists in that flex, in the clench of his jaw.

“You rejected me first.”

A curious thing to both have suffered at the hands of the people who should have been more careful. She hurt him when she didn't want to be his sister. 

She reaches her hand out, the tips of her wet fingers touching his dry cheek. 

His eyes widen. He didn't expect that. 

“I'm here now,” he murmurs. 

There’s relief in those words. Comfort. She wants to let them wrap around her and give her something she hasn’t had in such a long time. Her hand cups his face. She knows he wants her to feel that way. He _is_ here now, but-

“For how long?”

Her tail thrashes, black ink in her water. His gaze doesn’t leave her face though. It doesn’t trail off to follow the anger that brims just beneath the surface. 

He makes a soft noise in the back of his throat. “I can’t stay indefinitely, Ulla. And you can’t leave indefinitely.”

He moves, rolling up his pants and taking up his shoes. She lets him sink his legs into her pool, next to her. “But I do need you.”

Her lips press into a fine line. She knows the hints of desires underneath his sweet words very well. They’re Signy’s words. Roffe’s. They’re all the words of all the people who have come to her for help. He gives her a smile that she supposes he means to be charming. It isn’t. Ulla feels beyond the need for being charmed.

But she’s good at deals and exchanges. 

His smile doesn’t slip from his mouth, but it darkens a bit. It had never reached his eyes. He runs his fingers through his dark hair, mussing it up a bit. He might be older, but there are still hints of a boy in there. 

“You need my help,” she finally says to him. “You require something from me.”

“Yes,” he admits.

She appreciates that. 

“There is nobody else who can help me,” he tells her. “Our mother - We exist for power, Ulla. That’s what she’s always wanted, and it’s what she’s always taught me. But that power comes at a cost. You know it well.”

A strange thing, considering this witch cast her daughter back into the water and never looked back. Perhaps she didn’t believe that Ulla would have the same power that her son has. But she does. Not the same, but the power. 

He takes her hand in his. “I ripped a piece of the world out and plunged it into darkness.”

She had swallowed whole the island her people mingled on. 

“I have heard of you,” she says slowly. “The Black Heretic.”

“News travels far, it would seem.” 

“The sea talks.” She covers his hand with her other one, but her touch is not soft and wistful. She squeezes, her black gaze not leaving his. Not letting him get away. “You can unmake the world. What need is there for me?”

He leans in, breath almost shallow. They’re alone, secluded, but he still pitches his voice as a whisper. “I don’t wish to be lonely any longer, Ulla.” She can feel the power in his touch, the energy that flows between them is almost electric. “And I don’t wish for our people to be feared and hunted. I need light.”

Long ago, she sang light. It required blood. It required a boy who hadn’t deserved what she did to him. Her nails dig into his skin now. 

“However you can give it to me,” he amends.

“I don’t sing for free, Brother.” Even for him. Especially for him.

He nods, as if he knew she would say that. Perhaps he did. If they are the same, cut from the same black material, then he is the same. He leans down even further until his dry lips are against her skin. She isn’t sure when the last time she was kissed. Perhaps a quick peck by Signy on her cheek so many years ago. But now her brother is giving her a gift, a kiss on her forehead. Is this free? Or does he think this suitable payment?

“Name your price, Sister.”

She keeps herself bowed beneath his presence, hands trapped, nails in skin.

“Your name. I want your name.”

“Aleksander,” he says in a hurried breath, as quiet as the still sea. 


	2. Chapter 2

Aleksander brings her their grandfather’s notebooks. They’re in considerable condition, since the years have passed. They’re heavy in her hands; this is part of her history and it weighs on her. She leans half out of her pool, slick black hair pulled over her shoulder. He sits next to her, pants rolled up to the knees. The magic their grandfather talks about is far different than the magic that exists in her veins. 

“Tell me more about Grisha,” Ulla tells him. “I’ll need to understand their magic.”

“It’s not magic,” he chides. “It’s the small science.”

Her gaze slides to him with a flicker of a frown on her lips. He can pull shadows and manipulate them. There are individuals who can summon a storm or part waters. Their grandfather created. How is that different from the things she has sung into being?

She flips a page in the journal. “You can call it what you like, dear brother, but magic is magic. Controlling and creating is beyond the norm with humans, is it not?”

He watches her, silent. She waits. Regardless of what they believe it to be, she still needs to know more. She needs to understand what she’s working with if she wants to create something entirely new. 

The knowledge her brother holds is astounding. Almost as astounding as his need to be correct, and when she challenges him, she knows it puts his teeth on edge.

Is this what it is to be family? Would they have grown up teasing each other if her mother hadn’t given her back to the water? Ulla doesn’t know, and she knows there’s no point in following that road to its endpoint. The ocean is where she belongs, and she can’t imagine having legs her whole life. 

She waits for him to snap. Perhaps because she knows he’s capable of it. What she wants is to see him fall apart and unravel. They’ve met only twice, but he always seems to be - quiet and calm, like the waves in the eye of the storm. Constant waiting, constant churning on either side, but alluring. There’s a sense of safety near him, but she’s not dumb enough to trust anyone, even her own brother. 

Especially her own brother, maybe. 

His fingers brush against her cheek as he tucks a strand of hair behind her ear. “Let me explain the differences.”

**

“Does she know that you’re here?”

Aleksander looks up from the journal he’s flipping through, making notes and trying to keep his papers away from the lapping waters of the pools. Paper is not well suited for where they are. “Who?”

“The woman,” Ulla answers. The mother. Their mother. Forming _that_ word out loud is - confusing. Painful. She can say it’s because she isn’t used to conversing so much, but there’s a constriction in her throat that leaves it dry and harsh.

“Baghra,” Aleksander tells her. 

Her name is Baghra. Ulla tosses the name over in her mind as if there’s a way to figure out everything about her from that alone. It doesn’t work. She doesn’t know how to understand this figure who doesn’t even seem real. 

“She doesn’t. I haven’t had to tell her about my whereabouts for a long time.”

There’s a flicker of a smile at the corners of her lips. Her attention moves back to the last of the journals again. She has a better understanding of the small science, and she has a few ideas that she can try to give her brother what he’s already paid for. She can feel his heavy gray gaze on her still.

“Were you hoping to meet her, Ulla?”

“Consider it a curiosity,” she tells him. Who is she? What is she? Why her father? Do they look alike? If she searched her face, would she find what she had always missed growing up?

Perhaps it’s the easy companionship she’s struck up with Aleksander, the familiarity that has no name and no firm concept. But she thinks of Signy, and she wishes that she can tell her about this. He’s prying open things better left closed up. 

“You would have to create legs for yourself again, if you ever wanted to meet her.”

She shakes her head. “You used _mervost_ to destroy the land?” Better to move on, better to not talk about what she would or could or should do. 

“I unmade it,” he corrects.

He likes to correct.

She rolls her eyes in his direction, so that he can see the full force of it. It’s ridiculous. She is a monster, a queen of the waters. She has sung so many things into being that shouldn’t be done and sank an entire island. But here she is, acting like a child. 

“I can create what you want,” Ulla murmurs. Her fingers run over the page she has discovered, the words of her grandfather and his creation of Baghra’s abilities. Aleksander’s abilities. 

He stills, eyes wide, lips parted as if he isn’t sure if he should say something or do nothing at all. “It’s possible?”

“Yes.” There’s pride in her tone, a swelling of her chest as she throws her shoulders back and lifts her chin. “We will need a few things. And I will need you.”

“Of course.” Ah, there it is. There’s the desperation she craves from her guests, the need for her to accomplish what they want. What they need. They are willing to give up so much to her, and that’s almost as thrilling as the actual payments.

Her fingers clamp around his arm, cool and firm. Their powers are an interesting combination. They are the same, at the very base of it. His skin on hers, against hers, she can feel that thrum of power that electrifies her nerves and gives her the boost she knows she’ll need. 

“You need me to amplify you?” His brow twists now. There’s a certain flare of disgust that accompanies the look on his face. 

“I don’t intend to make you into a bracelet,” she soothes. “What you want is for me to do the impossible. I need the power.”

She says impossible, but she knows it’s not. Impossible was creating fire that burned under water. Creating a power that complements the magic that’s created what Aleksander is falls in the same category. 

And Ulla knows that she’s the only one who can do this. 

Her fingers loosen from around his wrist, that jolt of energy dying as soon as it had come to life. 

“Do you need a sacrifice?” There’s a cruel, sharp smile that touches his soft, round face. He remembers as much as she remembers. 

But she doesn’t have those reservations any longer. Her heart had been cut out, and with it had gone her morals. 

“Of a sort.” Ulla shuts Morozova’s journal and pushes it aside. She swims away from the lip of the platform until she’s in the middle of her pool. A tunnel is underneath of her, her personal chambers that include the payments she’s taken over the years. “I need a child. Still in the womb.”

It was how their grandfather created their mother. It’ll be how Ulla creates the light.

“A child.”

“The power you seek requires a host, otherwise you might as well reach into the sky and harness the sun yourself.”

Aleksander blinks and climbs to his feet. “I have you for that.”

She smiles at him, sweet and mild, her head dipping in a sign of respect. She presents a pretty picture, humbled by the idea that she is going to create the sun and place it into a child. And then she disappears into the inky waters, away from her brother. She must rest and prepare. Her throat aches. She’ll need a voice.

She knows just the one, the sweet voice of a princess who had come seeking freedom from her overbearing parents. 


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> <3 ty all for reading this thing of pure imagination

The princess desired freedom in the way that most desire freedom. It doesn’t always mean escape. Freedom is personal. The princess desired to not choose a husband or ascend the throne. Her freedom was to not have the pressures of her place in the sea.

Ulla had welcomed her in, an arm around her defeated shoulders. She said her name was Ursula, and it took more control than she thought she had the energy for to not sneer. _Ursula._ Her grip tightened on the girl, pulling her in closer, murmuring encouraging nonsense. 

Ursula had a powerful voice, strong and sweet. She willingly gave it up to the sea witch in exchange for exactly what she wanted.

Eels had no need for singing or thrones.

Ulla drinks in the princess’s voice. It fills the spaces where hers had been burned away. She can sing anything into existence now. A pity that foolish girl hadn’t realized what she had. 

Time has no bearing on Ulla or what she does. What she is doesn’t care about time, so she doesn’t mark how long it takes for her brother to return to her, a young woman carried in his arms. She’s limp. Limp bodied, limp haired. Her belly bulges out as if the child is demanding escape. She’s ripe. Ulla doesn’t need to get her hands on the woman to know that she is exactly the kind of vessel that will work. 

His eyes find hers. “You’re sure this will work?”

“Do you doubt what I can provide?”

It’s not quite a hesitation, but it’s a moment before he shakes his head, as if to say he doesn’t believe in what she can do. He’s seen firsthand her power, knows what she comes from. Doubting her now will get him nowhere. 

“Your voice,” he says. He stands at the edge of the pool with his victim and his future. She stares up at him. “It’s different.”

“I can’t sing the way I used to,” she says as way of explanation. 

He has his secrets, and she has her own. 

“Into the water,” Ulla tells him. 

He takes a step, pulling the pregnant woman in closer to his chest as they entered the pools. Her head bobs and rests on the water, but she’s above it and breathing, and that’s what’s most important. She moves closer to the both of them, reaching one hand out to her brother. He helped her once, and it wasn’t for the best. Or maybe it was. They’re here together now, and she gets to help him. She’s been so alone for so long that she - she just hopes that this works out right. She wants them to continue to be something more than strangers.

She just doesn’t wish to be lonely any longer. 

Aleksander takes her hand.

Power filters through her at an unimaginable rate, breathtaking and hard-hitting. She’s been hurricanes, and it’s nothing like this. She breathes it in, head tilting back a little as she centers herself. She knows what to do. Ulla has always had the gift of being able to know what it is to do, even when she’s creating something new.

And this is the ultimate hybrid of magic and science and power. 

Her lips part. Her voice is so soft and sweet, a princess’ voice eager to please and weave. She uses it to her advantage now. The sun is warmth and life, and yes, there’s a cruel and brutal edge to it, that fire that kills when you’re not paying attention. Her song raises, and the cave walls vibrate with her. Her free hand is on the woman’s protruding belly, swollen with a child who will be less child and more a source of power never heard of.

Ulla can’t help but smile, the corners of her mouths tugging up wide and it lends to her song, sends it to places it hasn’t been allowed to be in a long time. There’s happiness inside of her, swelling like the oceans in the tides, in the storms. Aleksander watches her with an intensity that should make her uncomfortable, but she’s in her moment. And he is seeing why he came to her. Her song is one of light, so different from the fire that burns underwater. This one fills the room, the air. It crackles.

Aleksander's hand trembles against hers. 

The song comes to a blinding, screeching halt as his hand comes down in an awkward arc, shadows rippling in front of her. She moves in time to lose a tentacle and screams in that princess's voice, sweet and honeyed and sharp. A bloom of crimson muddies her waters. 

Her brother’s face is impenetrable. He stares at her with steel eyes and a steel mouth, eyebrows twitching with annoyance. 

He meant to kill her.

They - they always mean to kill her. Ulla swallows down that wail of agony that bubbles up in her chest. There will be nobody in her life that won't do what they can to be rid of her.

So she allows that anger to take her over, that blind and furious rage. She tastes copper in her mouth, breath ragged as the waves around them begin to thrash. 

“You should have used a knife,” she tells him. 

“We can't coexist, Ulla. You must see that.”

She doesn't. All she had seen was an end to her loneliness and someone who could understand her. She sees now that he fears that. It's in the tic of his mouth, and the curls of his fingers as he raises his arm.

The woman is in his arms still, limp, brackish water splashing her face.

She made him a _her_ , but one that would only know him. Would always serve him.

He doesn't want someone to understand, she's quick to realize. He wants someone who will give him power.

Ulla doesn't want the pity that washes over her for him, but it's there anyway. 

Gritting her teeth, she throws her head back and screams just as he brings his arm down in that cutting motion once more. The wall of water just barely protects her from certain death. It slices in half.

“You will always be alone, Aleksander. That's the gift I give you.”

His lips curl in a sneer at the same time that her arm comes up, the same as his had. She does not have his magic, but she shouldn't be underestimated. She gave him the gift of the sun, and she can take it back just as easily. 

Her song is animal, primal. He's beneath the water before he can give her his snide last words, his grip lost on the woman that served as her vessel. He's weak in her domain, and the taste of revenge is so sweet on her lips, so close. 

But no.

She hurts by taking away the things others desire, the same as was taken from her.

Before her dear brother can recover, she takes the woman in her arms.

His gift is to always be searching for what he wants most: the sun to light his way.


End file.
